Almost 80% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests have been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow and the richest biodiversity resides. Stumps as wide as 16 feet (5 metres) in diameter have been found freshly cut. The oldest stump to be dated in British Columbia was from a tree 1,835 years old! Below are photographs of only some of the big stumps that have been found. How many others are there? How many more will there be before this destruction is stopped?
Some viewers may find this content to be very disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.
Upper Walbran Stump
Circumference: 44ft
Diameter: 14ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Upper Walbran Valley, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2006
Photographer: TJ Watt
Gordon River Stump
Circumference: 38ft
Diameter: 12ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River, Port Renfrew Area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: July 2007
Photographer: TJ Watt
Gordon River Stump
Circumference: 40ft
Diameter: 13ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: March 2010
Photographer: TJ Watt
Gordon River – Hollow Stump
Circumference: 39ft
Diameter: 12.5ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: March 2010
Photographer: TJ Watt
Bugaboo Creek Stump
Circumference: 45ft
Diameter: 15ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Bugaboo Creek, Gordon River Valley, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2008
Photographer: TJ Watt
Gordon River Fresh Stump
Circumference: 44ft
Diameter: 14ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: March 2010
Photographer: TJ Watt
Gordon River Massive Stump
Circumference: 45ft
Diameter: 15ft
Species: redcedar
Valley: Gordon River, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2010
Photographer: TJ Watt
Bugaboo Creek Stump
Circumference: 47ft
Diameter: 15ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Bugaboo Creek, Gordon River Valley, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2008
Photographer: TJ Watt
Upper Walbran Clearcut
Circumference: 34ft
Diameter: 11ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Upper Walbran Valley, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2006
Photographer: TJ Watt
Bugaboo Creek Clearcut
Circumference: 35ft
Diameter: 11ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Bugaboo Creek, Gordon River Valley, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: 2007
Photographer: TJ Watt
Massive Redcedar Stump
Circumference: Nearly 40ft
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River Valley, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Estimated Date Cut: Early 2010
Ancient Redcedar Stump
Species: Redcedar
Valley: Gordon River Valley, Port Renfrew area, Vancouver Island
Since coming to power, the NDP government has so far continued with the destructive status quo of massive old-growth forest liquidation. Despite their 2017 election-platform promise to manage BC’s old-growth forests based on the “ecosystem-based management” approach of the Great Bear Rainforest (where most of the forests on BC’s Central and North Coast were set aside from logging), they haven’t made any concrete policies to protect ancient forests.
Now is the time to make the transition to sustainable logging in second-growth forests instead, and to protect what little remains of these incredible ecosystems.
Amazing organizations like the Ancient Forest Alliance represent the main hope we have of saving what little remains of these ancient forest ecosystems. Please support them in protecting British Columbia’s precious old-growth forests and forestry jobs.
Photo Credit
Photography by TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance
Ancient Forest Alliance
Street Address: Central Building, #303-620 View Street, Victoria, BC
Mailing Address: Victoria Main PO, PO Box 8459, Victoria, BC V8W 3S1
Phone: 250-896-4007
Email: info@ancientforestalliance.org
Website: www.ancientforestalliance.org
Featured Image
Klanawa Valley Giant Stump: This massive redcedar stump was discovered by the Ancient Forest Alliance, freshly cut in the Klanawa Valley, northwest of Nitinat Lake on Vancouver Island, in June 2011.
Thank you for sharing. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Maybe if a botanist was legitimizing the statements and photographs it would add to the rear problem, if any. NEW growth; younger trees add more oxygen than old growth. Yes, the ancient trees are wonderful to observe, but just suppose that several, not all, were selected to help the growth of others in order to ensure that in the future there will be ancient giants standing for future generations to enjoy.
I am sorry, but that has been proven incorrect. While younger trees grow faster, they are incapable of putting on the same amount of secondary growth of an old growth tree. Imagine an annual growth ring of a tree, say 20 years old, in a spaced silviculture plot. The surface area that tree puts on in secondary growth, even under the best growing conditions, would barely equal the surface area of second growth added to the branch of an old growth tree, never mind the amount of wood mass that it put on annually by the trunk of an old growth. Photosynthetic rates may be higher in young trees with access to full sunlight and nutrients, but the photosynthetic rate per LAI (leaf area index) of an old growth tree is incomparably higher.
That’s not the only important role of old growth trees. Below ground these giant trees form ancient networks with the help of mycorrhizal fungi, which allow trees to share resources, such as carbon, micro/macro nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus, expand root systems to access water, and to communicate with each other, such as sending early chemical warning signs to neighboring trees that a pathogen has entered the forest, which allows those neighbours to produce defensive enzymes and hormones before those pathogens physically reach them. The fungal network actually grows and ages with the trees, and is biologically different and significantly more resistant than a young fungal network in a second growth forest. Old growth forests also sustain a biodiversity of species that can only exist in old growth forests. They do not regenerate in second growth forests, and could take thousands of years to return, if ever. Biodiversity is what protects a forest from pathogens and environmental disturbances.
As someone who has done research on old growth cedar trees on Vancouver Island, I can tell you that the logging cuts are not selective. They are clear cuts using an archaic cut-block method that is supposed to mimic natural disturbances, but instead leaves the landscape a scarred and at-risk-mosaic of young monoculture stands. Selective logging is too expensive, so when you see giants left unlogged, it is only because they could not get the machine equipment in to those particular spots and they will return in a year or two to heli-log it.
The push to log old growths on Vancouver Island is a response to a crumbling logging industry which is due to poor government management over the past 15 years. We were in a boom due to the pine-beetle outbreak as stumpage fees were reduced and infected or dead stands were being logged left right and center. It wasn’t sustainable. Stumpage fees should have returned to a standard rate and the rates of logging over the course of the last decade should have been slowed to one that could be sustained by current silviculture plots. But because of poor government planning mills are shutting down across the province at an unprecedented rate, and logging families are taking the brunt of it all. It’s both an economic and an environmental disaster.
#endrant
I can understand why no one commented after Joseph.
Well said.
Well said Joseph. It seams like a lot of people ignore those facts and virtue signal. Watch the Lion King guys, there’s a circle of life…
What a travesty. Some politico must be getting their pockets lined.
Josephs comment has actually been disproved. The larger trees absorb more CO2 and produce oxygen. The new studies are available on a google search. We need to preserve old growth for many reasons besides their ability to off set our pollution. They hold the key to the diversity we need to continue to survive on this planet. They also share some of our DNA.
You had me until I noticed the dates on these images range from 2006-2010. It comes across that this is a current problem and a fault of the NDP, who were not in power during that time. Very misleading.
This practice is still happening, with many cut logs to prove this. Look on Google Earth around Port Renfrew, Walbran, and Nitnat, for example, if you’re around Victoria. It’s happening all over there. Then drive up Gordon Main and turn left anywhere near Renfrew and see for yourself. This article is not actually misleading, though I agree that more recent pictures would be helpful.
Do you really think it’s appropriate or helpful to use this disaster for political gain? Logging these old-growth trees is happening right now – under an NDP government – it happened under the previous Liberals, and under the NDP before that, and so on into the 1800s. Bringing attention to the practice is meant to stop it, not score political points. Geeesh!
BC Timber Sales: April 2019 has introduced their new Sustainable Forestry Policy. Page 12 “Innovation box” presents “Legacy Tree” as the new standard for saving Old Growth Trees – of which BCTimber Sales only recognizes 4 species: D Fir, Sitka Spruce, Yellow and Red Cedars. They have made their criteria as being 50% of the diameter Breast Height of the known largest tree. Doug Fir 2.1 m, Sitka Spruce 2.2. m, Yellow Cedar 2.1 m, and Red Cedar at 3.0 m.
Any identified tree however is subject to being cut if a) it is deemed a Safety Hazard to WorkSafe B.C. and or would unnecessarily add to the road building cost to harvest the remaining trees in the cut block.
San Forestry, Port Alberni has just upgraded by 70million $$, their Ancient Tree processing line – They will want a multi-decade supply of Ancients to pay off their mill costs